When a WLAN Radio Access Network (RAN) wishes to make mobility decisions for User Equipment (UE) such as smart phones that have both WLAN Radio Access Technology (RAT) and cellular RAT interfaces, the WLAN RAN needs a prediction of performance for an individual UE in the WLAN RAN. Previous methods for predicting the throughput of an individual UE have been based on only a subset of channel impairments, and can therefore incur significant prediction error due to variations in impairments that are not included in the predictor.
In the prior art, the use of a mathematical function, R(q), that maps the received signal strength indicator (RSSI) to a predicted instantaneous data rate in an idealized channel is known. This is discussed by J. Pavon and S. Choi in the article “Link Adaptation Strategy for IEEE 802.11 WLAN via Received Signal Strength Measurement,” published by the IEEE in May 2013. However, this model does not take into account a variety of channel impairments.